GOP fundraising lost an estimated $117 million to email spam filters

A new academic study estimates that Republican fundraising efforts lost approximately $117 million in potential donations during 2025 due to email spam filtering. Researchers Cameron Ellis of the University of Iowa and Lars Powell of the University of Alabama analyzed Federal Election Commission (FEC) data and email-placement tests to reach this conclusion.

The study identified two specific periods where emails containing WinRed fundraising links were disproportionately routed to spam folders. Between June 30 and September 15, 2025, first-time donations via WinRed dropped by roughly 75% across Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. A separate episode between February and April 2025 saw first-time WinRed contributions fall by 83% specifically on Microsoft Outlook.

In total, the researchers attributed a loss of 142,126 expected first-time donations to these filtering episodes. While the study suggests a significant financial impact on GOP candidates and committees, Google has disputed the researchers’ methodology and denied that its spam protections are biased toward any political party.